The global thin wafer market is expected to witness significant growth on account of growing need for ultra-thin semiconductor wafers in the industry. Owing to the advancement in technology, many complications encountered with traditional chip fabrication processes have been overcome. Ultra-thin varieties of semiconductors having a thickness of around 40 mm are estimated to fuel the market replacing the traditional semiconductors that have a thickness of around 500 mm. Thin wafers are estimated to constitute a significant share of the entire semiconductors market over the next six years.
Power devices such as LEDs, IGBTs, and RF devices, which have innovative packaging applications, require temporary bonding. The thin wafer market consists of vendors that satisfy the ever-growing needs of memory disks, consumer electronics, and wireless devices. Thin wafers provide support in minimizing the thickness of bundles for smartphones. Additionally, thinner wafers effectively deploy the management of thermal and electronic devices, which is expected to positively impact the market.
The proliferation of thin wafer users and high adoption rate of portable devices are the major factors that are expected to drive the thin wafer market growth. Increasing awareness coupled with expansion of the semiconductor industry is expected to augment market growth over the forecast period.
Ultra-thin wafers are more volatile as well as susceptible to damage under stress or cracking. The dies applied to thin wafers can break easily during the internal process, which may hamper market growth over the next six years. However, these challenges can be overcome with wafer support systems, which are expected to mitigate these challenges over the next six years.
High performance and low-cost device setups are required for various applications in the thin wafer market. Key application areas of the thin wafer market requiring temporary bonding include power devices (IGBTs), advanced packaging applications (interposers, TSV, and Fan out WLP), LEDs, and RF devices. The temporary bonding technology is anticipated to experience significant growth over the forecast period.
On the basis of application, the thin wafer market can be categorized into CMOS image sensors, power devices, advanced packaging: 3D TSV/Interposers, memory & logic, LEDs, and MEMS. The market can be further segmented on the basis of technology into dry polishing, wafer dicing, wafer thinning, and thin wafer handling:
The thin wafer market in Asia Pacific is expected to witness significant growth owing to increasing deployment of thin wafers in the semiconductors industry. The U.S. market is expected to witness significant growth during the forecast period followed by Asia Pacific. The key vendors in the market include ABB, 3M, All Via, and AIT.